The Owls (Hardwear Sessions)

By Janet Bergman

The owls woke me as they called loudly to each other, just a few feet outside of our loft window in New Hampshire. The sound of their cooing is eerie, but comforting.

Sitting up to look out the window, I think of my previous night's sleep, on the SFO-Boston redeye. After I climb a big wall I often have odd, unsettling dreams, usually having to do with sleeping in a portaledge or being umbilicalled to a hunk of granite for days on end. In this case, every time the plane jarred, I'd woken with an intense urge to put my carry-on backpack, which I'd stowed about four seats behind me, into a haul system and haul it up to me.

The loud nocturnal hunters, whom I had heard so many nights before, were so much more pleasant of a wake up in comparison. As I listened sleepily, the call of one of the owls, and then the other, fades. I picture one landing on a branch and hooting, and the other flying toward it in this all night game of tag.

Then I think of Freddie and I just a day before, climbing the 3000 foot Nose of El Capitan.

View Janet's photographs from the Nose

Freddie at the Stovelegs

Throughout 31 pitches of climbing over 15 hours, we'd stood on the same ledge at the same time only three times. We'd swap gear, discuss the upcoming few pitches, exchange a kiss and then reenter constant motion. Our communication was entirely verbal, like the owls, cooing back and forth as we do our jobs, making our way up the mammoth face. That climb up the Nose proved that we had finally started to figure it out, this whole lovers-as-climbing-partners thing. The emotional stress and odd behaviors that can come about while doing risky activities with those we know most intimately had led Freddie and I to essentially write each other off as mountain partners at some point.

Many see Yosemite as training ground for farther and wilder places. This was training of sorts for us too, as we'd hesitantly cleared our schedules for each other only, to give climbing together another try. After some tears (on my part) and frustration (on his part), we'd finally become a team, and had our first example of a successful, and more importantly fun, ascent of an objective we both dreamed of.

Freddie and I had become the owls--vigilant, yet playful--having finally learning to navigate the darkness of each others' needs and desires, tied in with the entirely unique emotional bond of our relationship. When I could no longer hear the owls I laid my head down again, rolled over and was lulled to sleep by dreams of our next adventure together.